EAN: 9780241235942

THE SINNER AND THE SAINT - KEVIN BIRMINGHAM GEB...

From the acclaimed author of The Most Dangerous Book  the incredible true story behind the
creation of a masterpiece of world literature  Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and PunishmentIn the
summer of 1865  the former exile Dostoevsky found himself trapped in a cheap hotel in Wiesbaden
unable to leave until he'd paid the bill. Having lost the last of his money at the roulette
table  his debts hung heavy over his head  his epileptic seizures were worsening  and his wife
and beloved brother were dead. Desperate  a story came to him  a way to write himself out of
his predicament: the murderer Raskolnikov  the hot  disorienting swirl of St Petersburg  the
axe  the terrible crime  and the murderer's paranoia. The book was Crime and Punishment  and
from the moment it was published it was a sensation. But how did this haunting tale of guilt
come to be  and why does it still hold such a sway over us all these years later?The Sinner and
the Saint gives us the story of the creation of a work of literature that has bewitched readers
for over a century  and of the two men so central to it: Dostoevsky himself  and Pierre
François Lacenaire  a notorious murderer and glamorous egoist who charmed and outraged Paris in
the 1830s and whose sensational story provided the germ of the novel. As reports of his trial
tore through Europe  readers asked themselves: could the instincts of nihilism  the philosophy
inspiring a new generation of Russian revolutionaries  also drive a man to murder? Showing how
both men's lives were directed by the intoxicating new ideas swirling around Europe in the
nineteenth century  The Sinner and the Saint also reveals why they still appal and entice us
today. Thrilling and definitive  this is the story of a masterpiece.

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